School of Psychology

Efficacy, helping and attributions

A Study on Efficacy, helping and attributions in the community - Summary 2008

Research team: Megan Reynolds, Yijin Chang, Giselle Cholkowski, Jade Gallagher, Keith Read, and Emma Thomas

Supervisor: Dr Anne Pedersen

Date: 21st January, 2008

For the past 30 years or so the term NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has been used to describe residents who, although acknowledging the need for a facility to be placed somewhere, do not want it located anywhere near where they live. The term has mainly negative connotations, and was likely coined in frustration by those responsible for making decisions regarding the placement of public amenities. The NIMBY Effect has been studied in a number of contexts including prisons, waste disposal sites, and drug and alcohol recovery centres, but there appeared to be very little research relating to schools for disruptive students which was the focus of our study.

Recently, the State Minister for Education announced plans for the State Government to remove violent and disruptive high school students from regular classrooms and place them in special centres that will focus on addressing their behavioural and learning problems, and eliminate the disruption caused to other students. From research conducted in Australia, it is evident that the majority of disruptive behaviour in classrooms is caused by boys, so it is likely that the greater percentage of the students in these special centres will be males. Although this study was conceived prior to the announcement by the Minister, the focus of the study on the reactions of residents to a hypothetical building of such a school proved to be timely and would provide useful information to the decision makers involved.

What we did
Using a combination of snowball-based and convenience-sampling techniques in July 2007, 250 participants were surveyed from the Perth and Mandurah communities in Western Australia. Participants had an average age of 42 (ranging from 18–94) and the sample seemed fairly representative of the Perth community based on recent statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Overview of the Study
In the first section, participants read an introductory paragraph which illustrated a hypothetical scenario which depicted disruptive Anglo schoolboys having behavioural problems in school. Participants were requested to think about the potential causes of disruptive behaviour which these schoolboys exhibited. Afterward, the participants rated their attributions toward the disruptive schoolboys. These attributions were divided into three subscales: internal controllability, external controllability and stability.

Internal Controllability. This refers to whether the schoolboys were seen as having the capability or conscious control to advert negative situations. If they are perceived as having such control, and chose not to exercise it, they are deemed to be accountable for their actions (e.g. “These students are entirely responsible for their own behaviour”).
External Controllability. This was defined as external factors which indirectly influenced the schoolboys to perform actions which caused the situation. It could also be events whereby they had no conscious control which directly led to the negative situation (e.g. “Family/social factors probably had an important part in causing this behaviour”).
Stability. Stable attribution refers to the condition or behaviour would remain unchanged in the future (e.g. “The behaviour of these students is not likely to change”) whereas unstable refers to the condition or behaviour will be subjected to changes (e.g. “These students will most likely grow out of their behaviours as they grow older”).

In the second section, participants were asked to rate on a number of emotions based on a 6 point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). These emotions were selected to describe the respondents’ affect towards these disruptive schoolboys and their behaviours which were subdivided into two main dimensions: anger and sympathy.

In the last section, potential helping behaviours of the participants and effects of NIMBY were investigated. Half of the participants were either presented with a paragraph which illustrated the government had intentions to build a special school for disruptive schoolboys in their neighbourhood and the other half were presented with the scenario of the school not constructed in their neighbourhood. After this, participants were asked to express their views on the construction of the school by indicating whether they would strongly support or oppose the building.

What we found

Participants who were given the scenario that the school would be built in their neighbourhood were significantly more likely to oppose the building of the school compared with the participants who were given the scenario that the school would not be constructed in their neighbourhood. Our findings support numerous other ones that have found a strong relationship between proximity and opposition to the siting of a facility.
A significant relationship was found between the attributions given as to causes of the schoolboys’ behaviour, and the emotional response of the residents. Specifically, participants who saw the boys’ situation as their own doing (internal attribution) were more likely to express feelings of anger, and those who saw the boys’ situation as due to factors beyond their control (external attribution) were more likely to express empathic feelings.
Participants who expressed empathy toward the schoolboys’ situation were more likely to indicate support for the building of the school. Conversely, feelings of anger toward the schoolboys did not have any effect on level of support for the school.
Finally, demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education level, and home ownership played no significant role in the level of support for the building of the school.

Concluding Remarks
This study contributes to our understanding of the factors involved in shaping the community’s reactions towards a special school for disruptive boys. We found that the perceived causes for the boys’ situation, the proposed location of the school and the emotional reaction of members of the community toward the boys influenced individuals’ opinions about the school. As has recently been discussed in the media, disruptive schoolboys have become a significant problem in West Australian schools and the state government has proposed that these students be placed into specialized educational settings that are better equipped to deal with these students. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence the community’s reactions towards such a project is important and currently relevant.